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Books and MusicWed, 21 Feb 2018 13:39:17 +0000en-UShourly1http://wordpress.org/?v=4.2.19ZAPPA AND FLOYD IN AMOUGIES 1969http://wearytune.com/zappa-and-floyd-in-amougies-1969/
http://wearytune.com/zappa-and-floyd-in-amougies-1969/#commentsWed, 29 Jul 2015 14:07:14 +0000http://wearytune.com/?p=6200When the original Mothers of Invention broke up in 1969, Frank Zappa found he had time on his hands. With nothing better to do he does a little tourism and is eventually contacted by Jean Georgakarakos and Jean Luc Young, founders of the French BYG label and owners of the underground magazine Actuel. At the […]

]]>When the original Mothers of Invention broke up in 1969, Frank Zappa found he had time on his hands. With nothing better to do he does a little tourism and is eventually contacted by Jean Georgakarakos and Jean Luc Young, founders of the French BYG label and owners of the underground magazine Actuel. At the time they were busy producing an outdoor festival in Paris and the idea was to have a Zappa as MC and have him co-host the festival with Pierre Lattes, a famous French radio/TV presenter and music editor for Actuel magazine. Zappa was offered $10,000 with all expenses paid, and happily accepted although he didn’t speak a word of French.

Dubbed “The First Paris Music Festival”, the event was originally to be staged at the Pelouse de Reuilly in Vincennes from 24th–28th October, 1969, and a number of acts were booked, including Pink Floyd, Captain Beefheart, Ten Years After, Colosseum, Aynsley Dunbar, Freedom, Keith Relf’s Renaissance, Alexis Korner, the Nice, Caravan, Blossom Toes, Yes, Pretty Things, Chicken Shack, Soft Machine, Fat Mattress, East of Eden, and Archie Shepp. However, with the prospect of large numbers of hippies invading Paris, the local French authorities got cold feet and decided to withdraw the promoters’ license only a few days before the festival was due to start. But Georgakarakos and Young refused to give up. They re-named it “Festival Actuel” and relocated to the Parc Saint-Cloud, a park in the Hauts-de-Seine department, near Paris. The authorities would still have none of it and a court order finally settled the matter forcing the promoters to move the festival to Amougies, near the town of Tournai, right across the Franco-Belgian border, a three hour drive east of Paris.

With the marquee set up in the middle of a field, the festival took place over 5 nights, entertaining an audience of 15-20,000 to a unique mixture of progressive pop, free jazz and contemporary music despite the seasonal cold, damp and fog.
Zappa introduced his friend Captain Beefheart, and regardless of the cold weather and late time, he maintained a presence that provided a powerful stimulant to all the other musicians. Zappa played with almost everybody, including Pink Floyd, Blossom Toes, Archie Shepp and Aynsley Dunbar, a fabulous drummer he would hire shortly thereafter. Most legendary, of course, is Zappa’s jam with Pink Floyd on a very extended “Interstellar Overdrive”.

The festival was filmed, and a documentary called “Music Power” directed by Jerome Laperrousaz and Jean-Noel Roy went on the French cinema circuit in June 1970. The film was instantly banned because of objections from various bands, most notably Pink Floyd, whose permission hadn’t been properly secured. The whereabouts of the master tapes for the festival, if any exist, are unknown.

The original poster advertising the festival at the original location is available here at Weary Tune.

]]>http://wearytune.com/zappa-and-floyd-in-amougies-1969/feed/0WHEN THE BLUES CAME TO EUROPE.http://wearytune.com/when-the-blues-came-to-europe/
http://wearytune.com/when-the-blues-came-to-europe/#commentsWed, 29 Jul 2015 14:06:39 +0000http://wearytune.com/?p=6198When the American Blues Folk Festival entourage arrived in Germany on 3rd October, 1962, German jazz scholar Joachim Ernst Berendt’s idea of bringing a cross section of American blues musicians to Europe for a package tour had finally come true. On one of his extensive jazz research trips of the United States in 1960, Berendt […]

]]>When the American Blues Folk Festival entourage arrived in Germany on 3rd October, 1962, German jazz scholar Joachim Ernst Berendt’s idea of bringing a cross section of American blues musicians to Europe for a package tour had finally come true. On one of his extensive jazz research trips of the United States in 1960, Berendt was literally blown away by the many authentic blues artists he had encountered, especially on Chicago’s South Side. American jazz had become very popular in Europe, and rock and roll was just gaining a foothold, and since both genres drew influences directly back to the blues, Berendt thought that European audiences would literally flock to concert halls to see these blues artists in person.

Once back in Germany he broke the idea to promoter Horst Lippmann of the German Jazz Federation, who was all for it. By this time Lippmann had years of experience producing concert tours, yet it took him and his partner, Fritz Rau, two years to put it together. Dubbed “The American Folk Blues Festival,” the performers that first year included John Lee Hooker, pianist Memphis Slim, bass player Willie Dixon, guitarist T- Bone Walker, duo Sonny Terry & Brownie McGhee, drummer Armand “Jump” Jackson, harmonica player Shakey Jake Harris (nephew of Magic Sam), and singer Helen Humes, who had joined Count Basie in the late 1930s. Most of these had never previously performed outside the US and the tour attracted substantial media coverage wherever they played and Lippmann & Rau arranged for their artists to appear on a series of television specials recorded for German television.

The first AFBF tour visited Germany, Switzerland, Austria, France and the United Kingdom, performing at prestigious venues such as the Olympia in Paris, the Titania Palast in Berlin and the Konzerthaus in Vienna. Usually two shows were performed on each night, an afternoon show and an evening show. Although officially dubbed the American Folk Blues Festival, the shows in Paris were billed as “Festival de Rock And Roll et de Rhythm and Blues”, while the shows at the Manchester Free Trade Hall were dubbed “Jazz Unlimited/Rhythm & Blues U.S.A”.

For the German concerts, graphic duo Hans Michel and Günther Kieser were asked to come up with an advertising poster. Two different designs were eventually printed, one in pink in landscape format, and another in b/w in portrait format.

The tour was a major success and played a vital role in exposing American roots music to a new and appreciative audience abroad, especially in the United Kingdom, where the concerts proved to be a significant eye-opener for the founding members of the British blues-rock boom. Attendees at Manchester on Sunday, 21st October, the first ever venue for the festival in Britain, included Mick Jagger, Keith Richards, Brian Jones and Jimmy Page.

The program for the Manchester concert together with ticket stub for the evening concert is available at Weary Tune. We also have an original poster signed by artist Günther Kieser and the entire entourage except Jump Jackson. T-Bone Walker also dated it 10-6-62, which is the date for the concert at the Kongreßhalle in Frankfurt – the first AFBF concert on German soil.

Boosted by the enormous success of the first festival, the AFBF took place every year from 1962 to 1972, and again from 1980 to 1985. Absent only in 1971 and 1984.

]]>http://wearytune.com/when-the-blues-came-to-europe/feed/0GÜNTHER KIESER’S JIMI HENDRIXhttp://wearytune.com/gunther-kiesers-jimi-hendrix/
http://wearytune.com/gunther-kiesers-jimi-hendrix/#commentsWed, 29 Jul 2015 13:59:34 +0000http://wearytune.com/?p=6196Together with Rick Griffin’s “Flying Eyeball” poster, Günther Kieser’s “Wired Hair” image of Jimi Hendrix is arguably the best known Hendrix poster ever created. The poster was designed to advertise the Jimi Hendrix Experience’s January 1969 8-date German tour, produced by promoters Horst Lippmann and Fritz Rau. Hendrix played the following venues usually performing two […]

]]>Together with Rick Griffin’s “Flying Eyeball” poster, Günther Kieser’s “Wired Hair” image of Jimi Hendrix is arguably the best known Hendrix poster ever created. The poster was designed to advertise the Jimi Hendrix Experience’s January 1969 8-date German tour, produced by promoters Horst Lippmann and Fritz Rau. Hendrix played the following venues usually performing two shows on each night:

As something new, I maintain that Kieser may have designed the poster, or at least fostered the idea for the poster, as early as late 1967. In his autobiography 50 Jahre Backstage, promoter Fritz Rau says he wanted to bring Hendrix to Germany ever since witnessing him perform at the Olympia in Paris in October 1966 as a support act to Johnny Hallyday. 1967 was out of the question since the Jimi Hendrix Experience had already been booked to appear at the Star Club in Hamburg during March 1967 and then again in May visiting Berlin (15th), Munich (16th), Frankfurt (17th), Offenbach (18th), Kiel (27th), and Herford (28th). Instead a nationwide German tour produced by Lippmann+Rau was planned for January 1968. In late 1967 the following dates were advertised by Lippmann+Rau: Musikhalle, Hamburg (15th), Stadthalle, Bremen (16th), Deutsches Museum, Munich (17th), Sportpalast, Berlin (20th), Jahrhunderthalle, Frankfurt (21st). The tour was billed as “A Concert In Psychedelic Music”.

It’s quite conceivable that Kieser must have started work on an advertising poster by the time these tour dates were publicly announced. It also fits in very well with the fact that the “Wired Hair” poster was created using an official b/w photograph of Jimi by Donald Silverstein. Silverstein’s only photo session with Hendrix was in 1967. Kieser has later explained: “The expression of this portrait (the photo) with the strong hair around his face was like a human signal. I enlarged the volume of his hair in a collage for my visual idea to bring in colorful electric strings. I found this idea in a second, as if it came with the sound of his music. I was sure this would be understandable for the audience and a visual translation or interpretation for Jimi Hendrix and his music.”

Why the January 1968 tour was canceled, I don’t know. Hendrix did play in both Sweden and Denmark in early January so it’s not that he wasn’t in the region. And his US tour didn’t start until February. If any of you can shed some light on this, I would love to hear from you.

Back to the poster itself. There are plenty of different versions, but only few are worth collecting.

First and foremost there is the original concert poster, printed before the shows as an advertising poster, with the primary purpose of selling tickets. These were printed in two different sizes, which was quite common in Germany at the time: A1 (594 x 841 mm) and the large A0 (841 x 1189 mm). These posters are widely sought after by collectors and are now selling for well over $10,000.

Then there is the official poster-program, which was sold as a souvenir at the January 1969 German concerts. It was a folded poster in A0 format printed on both sides. The front of the poster-program is identical to the concert poster but without the date and venue imprint.

The original Darien House poster, also known as the Stuttgart poster, also deserves a mention. It was sold as a souvenir at the April-May 1969 US concerts. The story is that Kieser’s image turned out to be so popular with the public that it was decided to have the poster reproduced but with an imaginary date and venue as not to confuse it with the original concert posters (the same thing was done with Kieser’s Fleetwood Mac poster the following year). The poster was distributed by Jack Rennert’s Darien House in New York and subsequently sold at the Spring 1969 US shows. Rennart was a huge fan of Kieser’s art and had distributed his posters in America years before the Hendrix poster. Again there are two different sizes of the Stuttgart poster, but for an entirely different reason. The first printing was in the large A0 format and it was printed on the same uncoated paper stock as the concert poster and the poster program. Most of these were destroyed in a warehouse fire and only very few copies survived. The Darien House poster which was sold at the Spring 1969 US tour is slightly smaller and is printed on light coated paper stock. The fact it measures approximately 25″ by 35″ inches indicates it was probably printed in the US regardless of the fact it says “Printed in West Germany”.

As for all the other numerous versions of Kieser’s poster, well, avoid them. They are not really worth collecting.